Vanity Fair and Faithful

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:15

Christian has overtaken Faithful, the voice ahead of him in the dark valley, and the two walk on together. Evangelist meets them once more and warns them plainly: they are about to come into a town where they will be hard beset, and one or both of them must seal their testimony with blood. Be faithful unto death, he says, and the King will give you a crown of life. Then they come out of the wilderness and see the town ahead. Its name is Vanity, and in it there is a fair kept all the year long, called Vanity Fair.

A fair that never closes

Bunyan tells us the history of the fair. Almost five thousand years ago, Beelzebub, Apollyon and Legion saw that the pilgrims’ path to the Celestial City lay through this town, and set up a fair there to sell all sorts of vanity. And what is sold? Houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures and delights of all sorts; wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold and precious stones. There are rows for every nation. There are jugglings, cheats, games and plays, and — to be seen for nothing — thefts, murders and adulteries.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. ECCLESIASTES 1:2

The list is deliberately jumbled. Crowns and lusts, souls and silver, children and servants, all laid out on the same stalls. That is the genius of the picture. In Vanity Fair everything has a price, including things that should never be bought and sold — people, bodies, souls. The fair does not only sell sin; it turns good things into merchandise. A family becomes a status symbol; a career becomes an idol; a soul becomes a commodity. Much of the modern economy of attention would have been perfectly familiar to Bunyan.

And there is no way round it. The way to the Celestial City lies right through this town, and anyone who would avoid it must needs go out of the world. Christ Himself went through it, on a fair-day too, and Beelzebub led Him from street to street and offered to make Him lord of the fair if He would do him reverence. But He had no mind to the merchandise, and left the town without laying out so much as one farthing.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. MATTHEW 4:8–9

Why the pilgrims caused a riot

As soon as Christian and Faithful enter the fair, the whole town is in a hubbub, and Bunyan gives three reasons. First, their clothes are different; people call them fools, bedlams and outlandish men. Second, their speech is different; they naturally speak the language of Canaan, and the men of the fair cannot understand them. Third, and most offensive of all, they set very light by the wares. They will not even look at them. When called to buy, they put their fingers in their ears and cry, Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and look upward.

Then someone mockingly asks, “What will ye buy?” And they look gravely at him and say, “We buy the truth.”

Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. PROVERBS 23:23

Notice that the pilgrims do nothing violent or even particularly provocative. They do not overturn the stalls or preach in the market. They simply refuse to be customers. That is what the world cannot forgive. A Christian who shares the world’s desires in a slightly more respectable form causes no stir at all. A Christian who plainly does not want what the world is selling is a standing rebuke.

The trial

The pilgrims are beaten, smeared with dirt and put in a cage as a spectacle. They bear it patiently, blessing those who curse them, and some in the fair begin to take their part, which only makes things worse. At last they are brought to trial before the judge, Lord Hate-good, charged with being enemies to the trade and disturbers of the town.

Three witnesses testify against Faithful: Envy, Superstition and Pickthank — a flatterer. Envy says Faithful holds that Christianity and the customs of the town are diametrically opposite and cannot be reconciled. Faithful answers boldly. The jury is made up of Mr Blindman, Mr No-good, Mr Malice, Mr Love-lust, Mr Live-loose, Mr Heady, Mr High-mind, Mr Enmity, Mr Liar, Mr Cruelty, Mr Hate-light and Mr Implacable, and they bring him in guilty with one voice.

Readers in Bunyan’s day would have known what he was doing. He had himself stood before justices and been sentenced for refusing to conform. The indictment against the pilgrims — making commotions and divisions, winning a party to dangerous opinions, contempt of the law of their prince — has the ring of the charges against Dissenters in Restoration England. Vanity Fair is not only the world in general. It is the world at the moment it becomes a persecutor.

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. 2 TIMOTHY 3:12

Faithful’s death

Faithful is scourged, buffeted, lanced with knives, stoned, pricked with swords, and burned to ashes at the stake. But behind the crowd stands a chariot and a couple of horses waiting for him, and as soon as his enemies have finished, he is taken up into it and carried through the clouds with the sound of a trumpet, the nearest way to the celestial gate.

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. REVELATION 2:10

It is one of the most moving moments in the book, and it is also profoundly consoling. Evangelist had told them that the one who died at Vanity Fair would have the better of his fellow, because he would reach the city soonest and escape many miseries on the road. What looks like defeat to the fair is, to heaven, the quickest way home. Bunyan wrote those words in the knowledge that he himself might be hanged.

Hopeful rises from the ashes

Christian is remanded to prison and, by the overruling of Him who rules all things, escapes. But he does not go on alone. A man named Hopeful, made so by watching Christian and Faithful in their words and behaviour and their sufferings at the fair, joins himself to him in a brotherly covenant. Thus, says Bunyan, one died to bear testimony to the truth, and another rose out of his ashes to be a companion to Christian. Hopeful tells him that many more men in the fair will take their time and follow after.

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. JOHN 12:24

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Walk through a street, a shopping centre or across a screen this week and notice the wares of Vanity Fair. Which stalls call to you most?

2. Ask honestly: would anyone at the fair notice that you are a pilgrim? In what one way could your clothing, speech or spending be more plainly Christ’s?

3. Pray for Christians on trial or in prison for their faith today, and for those who judge them.

4. Is there a place in your life where you are expected to buy what the world is selling? Practise the answer: I buy the truth.

5. Think of someone whose faithfulness under pressure made you a pilgrim. Thank God for them.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You walked through Vanity Fair and bought nothing, though its lord offered You all the kingdoms of the world.

Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity. Give me a love for the truth that makes the world’s wares seem light.

Make me different enough to be noticed, patient enough to bear reproach, and faithful enough to die rather than deny You.

And let my faithfulness, like Faithful’s, raise up hope in others who are watching. Amen.